Interactive movies and role-playing games have been commercially available for numerous years. An interactive movie is typically a video game presented using a full-motion video of either animated or live-action footage. Early interactive movies resulted from the introduction of laserdiscs and laserdisc players, which were the first video game devices that enabled a single player to select a course of action that affected the ongoing event sequence of a movie. Depending on the player's selection, a resulting video scene would be played. The first commercial interactive movie and game, Dragon's Lair, was introduced in 1983 and was played on a video arcade console.
Because interactive movies have traditionally only enabled one player to act out an event/scene, such systems are not capable of supporting the interaction of multiple players to act out an event/scene. Accordingly, there is a need to enable multiple players to interact with a movie or game concurrently.
Interactive movies are typically restrictive in providing a player character with a limited number of actions to perform, i.e., choose the left or right door. The limited number of action choices is typically considered unrealistic and predictable to players, resulting in a less enjoyable experience. Accordingly, there is a need to provide an interactive movie or playing experience that is less predictable and more realistic to players, and, therefore, more enjoyable.
A role-playing game (RPG) is typically a game where a player assumes the role of a character within a virtual world or environment. Early RPGs, such as Dungeons & Dragons®, were played using books and the imagination of the players.
With the improvements made in computer networking and graphics rendering, including improved 3D image rendering, increased network data rates, and increased computing capacity of clients and servers, role-playing games have migrated to computer systems and networks. Unfortunately, certain existing RPGs, such as the World of Warcraft®, which is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), provide location-based adventuring where players often travel to a pre-defined location, such as a dungeon, to perform a particular activity. As a result, many players are often queued at the entrance of the same dungeon or activity and must wait for other players to perform the activity. Such a repetitive activity by each player diminishes the purpose of providing a realistic gaming experience. Accordingly, there is a need to provide a more realistic adventuring experience to players.
Location-based RPG adventuring typically requires players to be distributed among different servers that redundantly provide a particular adventure or story-line. For this reason, players using different servers are restricted in their ability to interact with each other. Therefore, there exists a need for allowing players using different servers to meet, socialize, and play together.
In addition to providing adventuring experiences, RPGs enable players to interact socially through these experiences. Certain RPGs, such as Second Life®, enable players to create avatars, i.e., virtual representations of themselves or alter-egos of themselves with desirable physical skills and characteristics. Avatars may also be referred to as “player characters.” Unfortunately, certain players often lack the social skills or confidence to socially interact with other players. Accordingly, there is a need to assist less socially adapt players in their interactions with other players.
With respect to content development, RPGs have traditionally relied on developers to create story lines and dungeons. However, there is no efficient forum or mechanism to enable the integration of new story lines of various types into current RPGs. There are also no efficient mechanisms to facilitate the integration of merchandizing with story lines, or mechanisms that can address intellectual property concerns. Therefore, there is a need for creating a mechanism for enabling richer content development and integration into an RPG, while addressing intellectual property concerns associated with such content.